


Ashes in My Mouth

by orphan_account



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-12-21
Updated: 2002-12-21
Packaged: 2018-11-21 00:41:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11346465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Warning: This story may offend a great many readers. Read at your own risk. Summary: Walter on his balcony, thinking not-so-warm thoughts.





	Ashes in My Mouth

**Author's Note:**

> Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Basement](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Basement), which moved to the AO3 to ensure the stories are always available and so that authors may have complete control of their own works. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [The Basement's collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thebasement/profile).

 

Ashes in My Mouth

### Ashes in My Mouth

#### by Daiko

WRNING - NC17 - Note: contains rough and non-con sex, inadvertent incest. Read at your own risk. 

Walter lovers beware - this is not a nice story. 

Disclaimer: All characters belong to CC and 1013 Productions. This is not for profit, no copyright infringements intended. 

Spoilers: None really 

Thanks to Josan for the beta and encouragement. All errors and omissions are my own. 

Ashes In My Mouth 

by Daiko 

Tonight I will die. 

I feel nothing. 

I sit on my balcony and watch the distant fireworks through the waft of smoke from the cigarette that burns unheeded in the ashtray at my side. 

In one hand I hold a tumbler of bourbon, the other rests in my lap, thumb idly caressing the cold grey steel that will be my destiny. Tonight. I have chosen. I watch the smoke drift by, and let my thoughts go with it. People always say that their life flashes before their eyes when they're staring death in the face. Mine is a slow parade, grainy and grey, like an old time movie... 

Idly I searched my jacket pockets for my pack of smokes then, with a soft noise of exasperation, remembered that in order to appease Sharon, I had left them at home this morning, throwing them down onto the breakfast bar like the proverbial gauntlet. She wanted me to stop - worried about cholesterol and stress and ... all those other things that a stay-at-home wife had time to worry about. Damn. I really needed one. Perhaps I had time to sneak down to the vending machine. I was interrupted by a tap on the shoulder. I turned, to find a pack of Morleys proffered. The man smiled genially, "Here, Agent Skinner, be my guest." 

And so it began. 

My office, several years later. Only now was I beginning to understand how expensive that bludged nicotine fix was going to be. "Just a small favour," he had said, smiling benevolently with his mouth, but not his eyes, "and then I should be in a position to hand over the information that you seek." And the favours had been small. At first, I thought it would be worth it. Who could have guessed? 

Doctor's waiting room, Sharon in tears, pushing away my clumsy attempts to comfort her. I go outside and fetch the car, we ride home in silence. She will not look at me. Barren.  
Sharon is barren.   
Sharon is barren.   
The words chase each other round my head like a schoolyard chant. She is also heartbroken. A child is the one thing in the world that she really wants. It is, I have come to believe, the only reason she married me - she thought I'd be a good provider, a strong, steady, stable influence in the childs life, quite unlike the volatile father she had known. She had turned down offers from men who could offer her a lot more materially for me. At the time I had thought it was true love. But not now. 

The saddest thing was that I could have lived with that, for the child. Because, truth be told, I badly wanted a child, too. I wanted to be a father. I wanted to be strong and steady and stable and dependable, unlike my own father. I could have forgiven her almost anything for a child. But now, the fabric of our life together was fraying at the edges, and it wouldn't take much to tear it apart. 

And so I began the search. 

She was beautiful. High cheekbones, small rosebud lips, pert nose. Stunningly huge eyes in a delicate heart-shaped face, slim and graceful. She had studied to be a ballet dancer in her home country and it showed in the way she moved. 

Her name was Galina. Her parents were Russian defectors; her father, a research scientist of some kind; her mother, a scholar. They lived in the city, working at the university. She was spending the summer staying with the family of one of the other professors, who happened to be our neighbours, to try and help her assimilate better into the American family way of life while her parents were both busy. She was hoping that when she went back home she would be able to audition for a dance company. 

At first I only talked to her to please my mother, who thought it was the least we could do to help the poor Russian girl fit in, especially as my great-grandmother was originally from Minsk. Galina's English was barely understandable, heavily accented and halting. I felt sorry for her; the other girls in the town, including my three sisters, snubbed her, making fun of her unfashionable clothes and bad English. The boys laughed at her and made snide sexual references that went right over her head. More and more, I found myself taking on the role of defender and, little by little, as I got to know her better, I started to fall in love. What was there not to love? She was pretty and smart and funny, and seemed to enjoy my company. 

When I volunteered to serve my country, she gave me the greatest gift she could. I can't tell you how many times in 'Nam that I would think about her, and it would get me through. I'm not saying there weren't others; there were. But she was just so... special. I couldn't wait to get home to her. 

And eventually I did come home. She was gone of course. To the city to pursue her dream of dancing. Or so I thought. On the second day I was home, Professor Endicott's wife came to see me, carrying a bundle of letters. I felt my heart sink. My letters. My letters to Galina. She had tried to forward them on for me, but they had been returned. Galina's parents had moved on. Her husband wasn't sure where. 

Galina's father had been offered a better job in Washington, and they had packed up and gone almost overnight. Mrs Endicott had hesitated, then lowering her voice, she leaned in conspiratorally, and almost whispered... "There was a rumour, about the daughter..." 

I looked for her, but it was hopeless. Where to start? No one could tell me anything; in the end, I put her out of my mind, convincing myself that they were just vicious small town rumours. Galina was probably off touring the country, living her dream. Perhaps she had even married and settled down somewhere - had started the dancing academy she had always talked of. 

I married Sharon, and looked forward to a family with her. Until that day in the doctor's office. I resolved to renew my search. It became my Holy Grail, my knight in shining armour quest. It was my secret project; well, secret from Sharon. But even using the resources of the bureau, I had come up empty handed. 

But it hadn't gone unnoticed. That was what had brought me to the attention of my Morley smoking friend. He said that he had heard of Galina's father. He said that he was at one time a colleague of an acquaintance of his. He said that he had heard that there was a child. He said that he would make a few discreet inquiries. 

A fox hole in Nam, rough, callused hands fumbling in the dark. Hot dank breath, stifled grunts, sticky, tell-tale smells. We all did it; well, most of us did it, and those that didn't turned a blind eye. We were young and scared we were going to die or worse. Somehow, it seemed easier to pretend we only needed the sex, and not the comfort. 

In the light of day, we avoided each other's hollow eyes and pretended it hadn't happened. But in the dark, we would seek each other out, and our eyes were needy and frightened, like small children hiding from the bogey-man under the bed. 

That's how it started with John. One night working late, I stopped down at his office to drop off a report I wanted clarified. He was still there, staring into space. When he finally noticed me, his gaze was empty and lonely and confused. It touched me, made me think about those hasty clandestine encounters of my youth, and before I knew it, I had reached out, grabbing him by the back of the head and pulling him in for a kiss. Harsh and brutal and needy. It felt good. When I drew back, he was panting, still looking confused, but at least he didn't punch me as I half expected he would. Instead his gaze steadied, and then he smiled. I knew then that he too remembered what it had been like. We went home together that night. 

My apartment, not his. Always mine. My turf. The upper hand. Two alpha males warily circling, edging for dominance any way we could. The destination always of my choosing. I was the top dog, and I would show him that. I needed aggressive release, and he needed to resist. 

When I bent him over the table, forcing his head down with my forearm, ignoring his gasps of pain, he would struggle and twist. 

When I would force myself in with the barest of preparation and the merest slick of lube, he would grunt and bite and kick. 

When I grabbed his hair and held his head back, his neck would cord with the strain, and he would curse me, breathlesss and vile. 

I knew that sometimes the brutality and the violence frightened him. I could see it in the wariness in his eyes, but still he came back for more. It made me feel good. It made me feel like a man. I did not feel impotent when I could take this tough ex-marine and certified brave federal agent and bend him to my will. 

We never spoke about it. We never spoke about anything. There was just me, him, and the heat. 

Undeniable. Rough. No foreplay, and no tender words after. Just "the act". That's how I thought of it. That's how I thought * he * thought of it. 

Apparently not. 

A simple message in my voicemail. 

"You need help. I don't need this. I don't need you." 

Too much of a coward to tell me to my face. 

We never spoke of it. 

Life went on. 

The stairwell. Krycek's face through a haze of pain. In my peripheral vision, I see the man I now know as Cardinale steady his weapon, preparing to shoot - probably kill - me. Krycek steps in. His punches hurt me, but they also save me. His eyes so intense. He hates me so much, I can see it, I can smell it. It radiates off him. Yet he saves me. 

The hospital. He brings me back from death. He looks at me with hatred again, and disdain and forlorn, barely disguised hope. For what? An acknowledgment of some kind? When I do not respond, his eyes dull. Once again he is the cold mercenary I believe him to be. He goes. 

My balcony. 

Me, Krycek, the handcuffs. 

He fought just like John would. Maybe that's what drew me back to John, time after time. But whereas in John I would see fear in his eyes, then and there, I saw loathing and hatred and...something else. Like I was the lowest of the low. As if this was the very worst thing I could do - as if there was some reason why I shouldn't touch him like * that *. 

I mean, some other reason other than common decency or any of that usual bull shit. Those rules didn't apply to people like us, in situations like that. We both knew that. There was something else going on. But he didn't tell me, and I probably wouldn't have believed him if he had. 

Spender, oily and smoky at the same time. No mean feat. His shit eating grin and riddle-me-do's. Eventually he loses interest in the game and tells it to me straight. 

Kyrcek. 

Krycek is my son. 

That which I sought for so long, sold my soul and a good part of my life for. Under my nose all along. It's enough to make a man sick. It does. I vomit, and when I look up, wiping the foul bile on the back of my sleeve, Spender is smiling at me, his rheumy eyes as warm as a snake's. 

That's not the worst of it. 

He knew. 

All along Krycek knew, and thought that *I * knew, and that I was ignoring him. Denying him. No wonder he hated me. No wonder he saved me. Now I know why he cried silent tears of shame on my balcony that night. Now I do the same. 

If only I could take it back, turn back time... 

My chance has been and gone. I cannot even mourn the son I lost before I found him. Because, you see, he is not dead. 

That was not him in the parking garage. I know not how or why, that's part of the riddle I'll never know. But in being alive, he is more dead to me than if he were cold and buried. 

His part in the drama is over. He's out of the loop. Trying to build a normal life - well, as normal a life as one can aspire to after all that he's been through. He's not doing it alone. 

He has found someone who will help him, believe in him, * love * him. Someone to offer him strength and comfort and support. 

Wouldn't you know it? John Doggett. Small world, huh? 

And friends, too. People who have come to know what he did, the choices he made when he really had no choice, the sacrifices given up on the altar of trying to save the world. Unsung, unspoken. People who have come to believe him, trust him, like him. 

And forgive him. 

And in doing so, they are forever lost to me, for I cannot bear to take them back from him, and there is no place for me in his world. Nor in theirs. I see it in their eyes when they look at me. Something akin to pity and revulsion and a sadness that this has come to be. 

So I sit here, staring at the distant lights. Working up the courage. 

But the real act of bravery will be not to kill myself. That is the easy way out. After all I have done to him, I cannot lay this on him too. For him, I have to live. If you can call this living. I think that in any way that truly matters, I died a long, long time ago. 

Thankless, lonely years stretch ahead of me. 

I have burned all my bridges, and I can taste the fear and the bourbon, and the bitter gall of so many ashes in my mouth. 

* * *

If you enjoyed this story, please send feedback to Daiko


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